The idea emerged 16 years ago and was gaining strength. In the living room of his house of Vicente López, Soledad Rodríguez Zubieta (SRZ) says that at that time there was nothing like that. It happened to enter a hotel and perceive that, after taking two or three steps, depending on the subject that sounded in the lobby, The feeling of space would change. The building was the same, the color of the carpets remained the same, the smell of the environment did not vary, depending on the time the noise was more or less similar and, nevertheless, although it maintained its class, sometimes the site seemed more modern. Others, a little vintage.
The idea became strong because she repeated when she visited a clothing store where the atmosphere collided with music or when she went to a restaurant where the volume of the songs was much stronger than she should: she wanted to leave, she felt expelled. In a moment, it occurred to him. There was something that called “sound decoration.” “Stop and understand how music influences the emotional. Because music transmits things and interacts with space,” he explains.
Then, this psychologist with postgraduate degrees in cultural management, who had worked for years on the radio and as DJ, thought about the possibility of selling that idea to some brand. It was said: it should explain it a lot. It would be complicated. And yet, little by little, going from mouth to mouth, he began to have customers. Today, SRZ selects hotels, coffees and premises in different parts of the world.
The idea did not come from one day to the other. It occurred to him after a tour that he did when the information circulated in another way: she listened to albums, exchanged them with friends, subscribed to foreign magazines, read them and underlined them: in the interviews with the artists who liked it, he sought to mention influences and went in search of those names. Now everything has changed. One clicks and can find a lot of information and that entails another problem: sometimes someone who, with criteria, assumes a commissioner role is necessary. What to listen and why?
And if someone tells SRZ that there is a cruise that travels the Antarctica and asks him to advise him to musicalize the restaurant of the ship, what those hundreds of people will hear while enjoying a sole of Dover and look, for the large windows, the roughness of the ice, the flutter of the penguins about some iceberg, the first thing she does are questions: what kind is the cruise? What country comes out and where do you go? How old are the people who are going to go? How is the company that offers the trip? How is the brand you try to build? And so you review songs. “Then, you have to think about the environment: to place yourself in that place. Something that seems obvious but it is not so easy, take into account the imposing of the landscape that is going to be looking at. Because that scenario impacts in a very determined way,” he says. “Then another variable enters no less: the customer’s expectation. If you want it not to be very solemn, if you want something modern or discouraged, etc.. With all those elements, one is thinking, choosing, playing.”
Rodríguez Zubieta says that his differential with respect to other companies is their ear, the detail. And he clarifies: His is not functional music, a selection of themes that are repeated again and again until the tiredness in the lobby of a hotel. It also takes into account that there are people who work there and that she will have to listen to the issues she chooses. After associating with developers, he created an application to, remotely from his computer, to load and update that of each business.
Listen to music all the time. With full attention? “I cost me more and more. Because I have to listen to a lot of music.”
It was different when I was a girl. Some nights, before bedtime, put an album. Then, he closed his eyes and, thus, with the background, he was immersing himself in the dream. He chose another when he woke up and stayed for a while, listening to him in bed. “In adolescence, a very strong bond with things. That is why now certain themes lead me to a certain moment. Even some songs wake me up a certain smell,” he says.
Now it costs you more. It confesses a few years ago, during an interview like this, I would have put a background album. I didn’t endure silence. However, now he needs it. Read a lot. To read, prefer silence. And, at the same time, every time, it connects more with the sounds he listens. Also for life situations: he has two children, Marino (8 years old) and Lorenzo (15), and when they were boys, listening to music for pleasure became somewhat impossible. Little by little, he recovers it. Listen to many playlists, He jumps from one thing to the other.
Not because he thinks that everything that happened before was better, but because he believes that today’s consumption is much more disposable: one puts the song for a moment and, if he doesn’t like it, he takes it out.
“Isn’t there the possibility of finding something that perhaps one could not hear the first time?”
“If they lent you or bought you an album, although at first you would not like it, before changing or returning it you listened several times.” And perhaps that album that at first had not convinced you ended up becoming one of the main ones of your life … it doesn’t happen anymore. I think that speaks of a Berretization I feel that it is missing depth.
In addition to its main activity of “musical decorator”, SRZ provides consulting for clients or musical festivals. Twice a year, it gives an online musicalization course. It also meets as DJ: the day before the interview was in charge of the previous
It can’t be doing nothing. He realizes that there are people who can, but she doesn’t. “For me, doing nothing is reading. And I know that reading is not doing anything,” he acknowledges.
Yoga has been Yoga. Four times a week takes classes of an hour and a half and tries to never miss: it is the time when it is disconnected. He also began to meditate. “It’s barbarian because I don’t stop. I dream. I have dreamed to solve things. And that generates stress, anxiety. It costs me, but I work,” he says.
It seems difficult to specify the way in which having completed psychology served him for his profession, but believes that, beyond empathy that cannot be studied, understanding how the emotional works was a key aspect.
“Why did you never exercise?”
—In Argentina, the training and work of psychology always had to do with the disease and the therapeutic. And not so much with the promotion of health and prevention, which was what interested me. In addition, for a personality issue – I am very absorbed what happens around me – it was hard for me to be working with the pathological. What interests me is to spread joy. And while what I do is not music therapy, I seek to generate moments that can connect people with pleasure.
